of the region. In addition, it supported the one in Havana, as Llilian Llanes emphasized: “The Caribbean Biennale, event that was of great support to our bringing together artists of all islands in the area.”8 The Biennales triggered other events: Africa Caribbean Pacific Festival –ACP–, whose first edition took place at the Museum of Modern Art of Santo Domingo in 2006, allowing the exchange of glances between artists from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. It revealed that the art of Africa, fueled by its ancestral roots, but distanced from all traditional folklore, could enroll in the contemporary and technological practices.
The Exhibitions The first exhibition of Caribbean art took place in Puerto Rico in 1952. By force, it must be admitted that it was reduced to the presence of Trinidad and Tobago, then a British colony. In 1989, Magiciens de la terre (magicians of the Earth), organized at the Centre Georges Pompidou, by Jean Hubert Martin, welcomed 101 artists from Africa, Asia, the Far East and Latin America, with a weak West Indian participation. On the occasion of the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, the exhibition 1492 / 1992, a new look to the Caribbean traveled among the different island institutions, after having been inaugurated at the Espace Carpeaux, in Paris. It exposed “the most representative facets of the ‘creole’ aesthetic”9 in 118 works from 11 countries. In addition to this itinerant, other exhibitions began to occur in the Western centers. Exclusion, fragmentation and paradise; the insular Caribbean invited Soucy de Pellerano, who exhibited Encuentro de bestias (1996) and two unnamed sculptures; Tony Capellán proposed three installations from 1996: Manto Protector (condoms, wire and wood), La barrera del pudor and Los sacos del olvido; Marcos Lora Read, Pick up the Phone (audio installation); Pascal Meccariello, Con las ventanas abiertas, Bodega de efluvios and Fuente de ambiguedades; Jorge Pineda, Alta Gracia (1997, rag doll installation) and Casta Casa (woodcut from 1994); Belkis Ramírez, De la misma madera (1994) and La última estaca (1994); Fernando Varela, Scetrum (1996) and Baja misa (1997). 8 Ibidem, p. 216. 9 Bocquet, Pierre E., Catalogue 1492/1992, Una nueva mirada al CARIBE, P. 3.
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The interest, both for those collectives and for the biennales, multiplied events: Infinite Island, Contemporary Caribbean Art, takes place in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, under the direction of Tumelo Mosaka. Dominican photographers occupied a special place there, with Shampoo collective, which made reference in D’La Mona Plaza (2004) to the illegal and hazardous crossing of their fellow citizens that set sail to Puerto Rico by way of the Mona channel. This work gives to that risky trip, in an ironically funny way, all the details of the resorts that in recent times have been developed in the Dominican Republic to accommodate mass tourism. Las pasiones interiores (2001) by Polibio Díaz, showed humorously intimate scenes that reflected the wishes of marginalized classes under the influence of Western models, as well as the everyday life of insular populations in Después de la siesta. For his part, Fausto Ortiz captured the ephemeral and anonymous silhouettes of émigrés in Caminantes (2005) and in Sombras de acero (2003). Raquel Paiewonsky’s works had an intermediary role between photography –with her portraits Sembrada and Ima Ima díptico (2005)– and the installations Levitando en un solo pie (2003), Afro Issue and Mambrú (2006), by Jorge Pineda. The drawings Niñas locas, of the latter, also drew attention. Among the 45 artists invited, we regret the absence of Tony Capellán, without whom we can not talk about Caribbean art. Kreyol Factory, with the subtitle Artists question creole identities (Paris, La Villette, 2009) vindicated the West Indian heritage. In the catalog, quotations by Maryse Condé, Aimé Césaire, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphal Confiant, Frantz Fanon, Ernest Pépin, Chiqui Vicioso and Edwige Danticat confirmed it. Kreyol Factory was organized around several axes: “Crossing,” which boasted the emblematic work of Marcos Lora Read, Cinco car-rozas para la historia; “The confusion of genres,” De MaR en peor, by Belkis Ramírez; “Africa, imagined community,” “How black?,” with Afro Issue I, by Jorge Pineda; Después de la siesta, Doña deseada y sus chucherías, and Como mi casa ninguna by Polibio Díaz. The square these pieces occupied in the exhibition credited Dominican production and constituted a world which the passing viewer could absorb. Other sections were composed of “Islands under the influence;” “New worlds,” with Mar Caribe, by Tony Capellán; and the series Hombres muffler and Acorazado, by Límber Vilorio. Jorge Pineda hung his drawing Bozales para cruzar la
The preponderance of the magazines of North American and European centers, such as Art in America and Flash Art, dominated the field of publications until the 1990s, when local and regional publications appeared. The Dominican magazine Cariforum, published in three languages, under the direction of Marianne de Tolentino, informs on the Cariforo Cultural Center activities and has spread information relating to the Biennales: it devoted its issue of February 7, 2002, to the 4th Caribbean Biennale, devoting a page to each country. Likewise, the issue from January 12, 2004, dealt with the 8th Carifesta and artists from Suriname and Guadeloupe. Arts in Santo Domingo, “Specializing in Caribbean art,” gathers information from various correspondents and dedicated a number to “Art in Puerto Rico,” in October-December 2005; as well as to contemporary graphics, in the issue corresponding to JulySeptember 2006. Artep magazine, art and architecture, “disseminates information about the Dominican artistic avant-garde,” i.e., artists, events, exhibitions: for example, the 4th Caribbean Biennale10. The Journal of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture devoted its issue 4 in the first half of 2003 to the Dominican Republic. The critic and curator Abil Peralta referred in it to: “An overview: Dominican art, history and modernity from the colonial period to the 1980s,” while a work from Belkis Ramírez occupied a page beside a poem by Julia de Burgos on the new American woman, as well as the cover.
The Cariforo Cultural Center has organized numerous exhibitions, including La vida urbana en la región del Caribe; primera exposición itinerante inter-caribeña, which marked its participants. The Museum of Modern Art has served as headquarters to the Caribbean Biennale for many years and affirms Dominican talent by dedicating personal exhibitions to it. On the other hand, the Centro León, in Santiago de los Caballeros, plays a key role in the formation of young people, as well as in the production and dissemination of Dominican art. Their competitions, using recognized international juries, unceasingly undergo analysis aiming to improve more and more, and demand the highest quality from its participants. Some works of reference in this chapter have participated in such competitions or have been acquired by the Centro León, which was directed for a decade by Rafael Emilio Yunén, whose work has been fundamental in this regard. Two Dominican art critics stand out particularly: Marianne de Tolentino and Sara Hermann. Both have institutional responsibilities and acted on behalf of the Visual Arts of their island, without forgetting María Elena Ditrén, Delia Blanco, Danilo de los Santos11, Myrna Guerrero and Paula Gómez. Nobody knows more about art in the region than Marianne de Tolentino. She has accumulated experience, documentation, and interviews in the course of her travels and encounters with artists from all over the Caribbean, with the exception of Cuba. She is currently Director of the National Gallery of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo; she put in place the Caribbean Biennale in 1985 and was instrumental in it from 1992 to 2003. Tolentino became involved in the exhibitions of artists from the region, as it was presented in the 30th International Painting Festival of Cagnes, in 1998, which had artists from each of the twenty countries of the Caribbean. It was exhibited in Santo Domingo and then in Haiti, San Martin and Antigua between 2000 and 2001. Also, Tolentino was involved in Entre líneas, exhibiting pictures of the Caribbean with great quality. As for Sara Hermann, who directed the Museum of Modern Art in the Dominican capital between 2000 and 2004, and functions as Adviser in Visual Arts for the Centro León of Santiago de los Caballeros, she particularly dominates Dominican production.
10 Artep, Arte y Arquitectura, Edición especial, No. 1 y 2, febrero y marzo, 2002.
11 Danilo De los Santos authored: Memoria de la pintura dominicana, en VIII tomos. Ediciones Grupo León Jimenes, Santiago de los Caballeros, 2002-2007.
frontera (2002) in the exhibition Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, at the Museo del Barrio in New York, later at the Queens Museum of Art and The Studio Museum of Harlem in 2012-2013; and then in Miami in 2014, which is the most recent event. This recognition resulted in exhibitions outside the galleries: Jorge Pineda, Postales desde el paraíso, in the Casa de América in Madrid (2002); After all, tomorow is another day, in the IVAM in Valencia (2013); La práctica de la utopía, at the Fundación Clément (February-March 2014); and Mambrú, at UNESCO, Paris (May 2014). Polibio Díaz exhibited Doña deseada y sus chucherías and Como mi casa ninguna at UNESCO, also on the same dates.
Outreach: Magazines, institutions, critique
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